


lost and wrecked again

by jdphoenix



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Canon Divergence - Episode: s03e10 Maveth, Fix-It, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-12
Updated: 2019-01-12
Packaged: 2019-10-08 22:43:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,900
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17395085
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jdphoenix/pseuds/jdphoenix
Summary: There isn't a single person on this whole planet who doesn't want Grant dead.





	lost and wrecked again

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Crowder's "lift your head weary sinner."
> 
> I had intended to post this for Grant's birthday which, if you are unaware, was six days ago. Very much like the character it is written for, it was unruly and refused to behave. But I at least got it done while we're still in his birthday week, so I feel like that's something.

This Daniels guy—assuming he is who he says he is, which Grant is definitely not—is a pain in the ass. He’s full of eerie comments that always take a few seconds too long to come out of his mouth and, worse, he’s _slow_. He can barely climb the ladder out of that hole in the ground he’s been living in and when he finally makes it to the top, when they might finally be able to _get moving_ , well…

“What the hell?” Fitz demands. He’s tripping over his own feet, sending up dust in the wind that has Grant grateful for his goggles.

Daniels is on the ground right outside the hole, his bad leg behind him because the bandages have gotten caught on the top of the ladder. The wound’s worse than Grant thought. He can see bone.

“You’re not Will,” Fitz says. He’s still moving back. Behind Grant, for the record, for _protection_. Grant’ll be throwing that in his face later, right now they’ve got bigger problems.

Daniels—or whoever he is—stands slowly, but Grant gets the idea it’s less because he needs to be careful with that leg and more because he wants to put on a show. “I am,” he says. “And I’m not. He’s still here. Every thought. Every memory.” He smiles just as slow as he does everything else. “Jemma left me some good ones.”

Grant puts out his arm, catching Fitz before he can do more than lunge at the guy.

“You bastard!”

“Oh, grow up, Fitz,” Grant says, parroting his earlier words back at him. It does the trick, slapping some sense into him so Grant doesn’t have to do it more literally and leaving him room to focus on the real problem here. “So you’re … It? You have a less nightmare-clown name?”

“You may call me Hive.” The guy nods graciously. Grant chooses not to be insulted by his beatific tone.

“Okay, Hive. I assume, since you have all of this guy’s memories, you’re just as capable of getting us to the portal on time as he was.” If he’s not, if he can’t get them there, then they’re all fucked. Grant’s not kidding himself about this place. Sweet Jemma Simmons spent six months here and now she can withstand hours of torture. Grant can already do that so he’s not looking to toughen up any.

Hive’s expression is difficult to read at best, but the tone he speaks in sounds a whole lot like pity. “I can reach the portal. But I am afraid you’ve misunderstood the situation.”

Yeah, Grant knew it was looking too easy. “How so?”

“You will not be returning, not as you are now.”

Even Fitz is starting to worry. He’s backing up, trying to drag at Grant’s tac vest as he goes. “Ward,” he says warningly, like Grant’s some kind of idiot.

“And how will I be returning?” Grant asks.

Hive gestures to himself. Or, Grant guesses, at his body. Daniels’ body. The one with the sexy memories of Simmons.

Grant pastes on his tried and true talking-to-an-idiot-superior smile. “I think _you’ve_ misunderstood. We’re here to take you home.”

“Yes,” Hive agrees readily. “And you, Grant Ward, have been sent as my new host. Surely you were prepared for your destiny.”

The half-question sparks a memory in Grant’s brain. Malick, talking to him about just that. His _destiny_. He thought it was all bullshit to convince him to go on this mission. And he was so distracted when he mentioned John that he let himself get played.

Fuck.

Before he can come up with a response that’ll convince Hive _not_ to turn him into his next meat suit, Hive turns his head to the grunts Grant brought with him. They’ve taken positions in a loose half-circle around the cave opening to better watch for trouble—from outside the circle or within it. Each of them is either holding their sidearm ready or has their hand on it, which is why Grant hasn’t bothered to reach for his once during this whole conversation.

“I need him dead,” Hive says.

“Shit,” Grant breathes. Those guns are already coming up, taking aim. He grabs Fitz and he runs.

He almost regrets it, taking Fitz along. The guy’s an anchor weighing him down. Grant has to practically carry him up the rocks that are the nearest path out of this damn valley and there are bullets flying all around, not exactly a good time for this.

“Hurry up,” he snaps. Bullets fly past them, some of them so far off their mark Grant starts to wonder if Malick sent his least useful grunts along just to ensure he never made it back.

“Yeah, that’s not helping.” Fitz pushes him off, opens up the space between them, and a fan of dark liquid flies up in the air. A second later Grant feels the pain.

He’s been hit. Right leg, above the knee. Fuck fucking _fuck._

“Move it!” he barks at Fitz. The shooting’s stopped and Grant saw to the grunts’ weapons himself, he knows how much ammo they’ve got. This isn’t it.

He looks back just once, right before he hoists his bleeding leg over the ridge to slide down after Fitz. Hive is watching him. Even at this distance, he looks hungry. Grant can feel it even after he puts thirty feet of solid rock between them. He tries to shake it off, push the feeling of eyes on him aside, but it refuses to go away. He looks to Fitz, hoping maybe the blood loss is already messing with him, maybe he’s mixing up the feel of Hive’s eyes and Fitz’s.

Fitz isn’t looking. He’s sprinting across the sand, headed for a break in the rocks as fast as those completely not-fit-for-the-desert shoes he’s wearing will take him. Grant cursed those shoes earlier, thought they’d slow everyone down. Now he’s glad for them, they give him a little hope of being able to catch up.

Knowing what’s behind him helps too, but not much. The wound’s bad. Bad enough Grant’s visibly canting from side to side with each step by the time he reaches the break Fitz disappeared through. He hopes the other side is as wide open as this or at least makes it obvious which way Fitz went.

He needn’t have worried. The rocks open up into a wadi. Fitz is barely ten yards ahead, catching his breath beside another stand of stones.

“Don’t do that again,” Grant says, his own breath plenty thin too.

Fitz doesn’t move, but one of the shadows ahead of him does. The barrel of the gun appears first, then behind it…

Coulson.

Because things couldn’t get worse.

“Take his gun,” Coulson says. Fitz does. And the one in Grant’s boot. And his knife.

“Fancy meeting you here,” Grant says.

“Don’t,” Coulson says. He’s mad. Taunting-him-after-John’s-death mad.

It doesn’t take a genius to figure out why, given their last conversation but- “Seriously?” If he’d shot May then, yeah, he’d understand the chasing him across the cosmos but for _Rosalind Price_ , really? “You barely knew her-”

“ _Don’t_.”

“He deserves it,” Fitz says. His hand is shaking. Not, Grant thinks, because of the brain damage. Fitz is pretty well past that by now, didn’t show a sign of it while Simmons was being tortured and hasn’t shown any in all the hours they’ve been out here. No, he’s itching to pull the trigger himself. Probably he’s thinking it’s just what Grant deserves, having his own gun turned on him. “He tortured Simmons.”

It’s a good thing one of them has trigger discipline because otherwise Grant’d be dead with the way Coulson flinches.

“Yeah,” Fitz says, mouth twisting into something that’s more snarl than smile. He’s talking to Coulson, but his eyes haven’t left Grant. “He let the telekinetic do his dirty work for a while, but then he got tired of waiting. He made me-” Finally his face drops. “He made me listen.”

Coulson stares. For ten seconds. Twenty.

They really don’t have that kind of time here. Soon Hive and the grunts will catch up, then it’s just a question of who puts a bullet in him first. After that…

“Hands,” Coulson says.

Grant stares.

“You know the drill.” Coulson lifts a pair of cuffs from his belt. “Hands.”

Fitz makes a disapproving noise.

“There are others, right?” Coulson asks.

“They want me dead,” Grant says.

Coulson grins. The cuffs go on a little tighter than necessary. “Why am I not surprised?” He turns away. “He can be our human shield. Let’s move.”

“I’m injured.”

That starts Fitz up again. He argues for Grant’s death, outright calling him dead weight, the whole time Coulson examines the wound and ties a makeshift bandage around his leg.

“You’ll live,” Coulson pronounces when he stands, a diagnosis for Grant and an order for Fitz. “Which way?” he asks.

Fitz forgets about Grant for a few minutes while he tries to explain the problem—he needed Daniels to navigate—around Grant trying to explain that they are _being followed_ and they kinda left a nice straight line of tracks in the sand behind them.

“So do your best,” Coulson says, cutting into Fitz’s excuses with a fatherly hand on his shoulder. “That’s never been less than sufficient before, I don’t see why it would be now.”

From his expression, Fitz obviously doesn’t agree, but he does finally look to his tablet and pick a damn direction, so Grant doesn’t care.

Which each mile they cover, the pain in Grant’s leg grows worse and he can _feel_ the damage inching closer to irreparable, but it’s nothing to his stinging pride. Malick played him. Worse, it’s obvious in retrospect. He was so mixed up. An itch behind his shoulders every time the memory of Simmons’ screams rose up again. The sound of Thomas’ voice—for the first time in _sixteen years—_ making his heart clench in his chest. He was a mess. And Malick used that.

“Thomas?” Grant asks, pitching his voice so it reaches Coulson behind him in their three-man chain. They’ve changed directions twice since setting out, but they spent that first hour walking on rocks where they’d leave less of a trail and haven’t seen any sign of Hive or the grunts since. Maybe he decided to settle for one of them.

Somehow Grant doesn’t think he’s that lucky.

“He’s alive,” Coulson says after a brief pause. “Safe. We dropped him back home.”

“And that is…?” Ten years he’s been looking for Thomas, ever since he graduated from the Academy and discovered not even SHIELD’s resources could find a trace of him. It’s galling that Coulson’s the one who finally tracked him down, but at least someone did. Knowing he’s alive—it’s a weight off his shoulders. He feels physically lighter without it and he knows he’ll feel even better once he sees for himself his baby brother’s alive and well.

“Nowhere you’re ever gonna know. His one condition for helping us was that he’d never have to see you.”

Grant stops, turns so he can face Coulson down. “He’s my _brother_.”

Coulson nods, expression infuriatingly gentle. Like he actually cares about Thomas. “And he’s terrified of you. You think Christian’s why he disappeared?”

“He’s why I did.”

“Guys!” Fitz. He’s started climbing the rocks but has stopped long enough to adopt a fed-up posture. “I heard enough horror stories about this place from Simmons, I’d rather not stay here longer than I have to.”

“He’s right,” Coulson says. “You think you can climb?”

Grant eyes the rocks. They’re steeper than the ones he and Fitz went over earlier, and Grant’s in worse shape. “We’ll find out.”

He can, as it turns out. Not as well as he did in the immediate aftermath of being shot, but he had adrenaline working for him then. Now he’s just got Coulson.

It’s stupid is what it is. Coulson sticks close enough, all Grant’d have to do would be to push him a little and he’d go tumbling down to his death on the rocks below. But he can’t say Coulson’s not a help. He doesn’t know he could make it without his robotic hand doing some of the lifting.

“You tortured Simmons,” Coulson says. Grant’s trying to get his leg to support his weight well enough to reach the next hand hold and the way Coulson says it, the statement sounds almost benign, so it takes a minute to really sink in.

“Yeah,” Grant says. No point denying it. It’s gotta be ten hours ago now and he can still hear her screaming when the wind gets low. He wishes she’d shut up already. Coulson seems to expect more though, so he reminds him, “You had my brother.”

He wants it to sting, to make Coulson regret what he did by making it personal. But Coulson’s too good for that—reminds Grant of all those months he spent in that cell trying to get a rise out of him, never worked the way he hoped. Coulson just stares at him, lets the accusation rebound. He’s rubber and Grant’s glue. Or so he hopes.

Grant gets his damn handhold. “She’s fine. I cleaned her up myself. And so long as we make it back on time, she’ll be safe.”

“Hydra has her,” Coulson says, easily keeping pace with him. “She won’t be safe until she’s rescued.”

At the top of the ridge, Fitz is gesturing wildly. He drops to his stomach and practically drags Grant up the last few feet, hissing at Coulson to hurry. The reason why becomes obvious when Grant looks back down the length of the wadi they just left.

Four figures are making their way over the rocky terrain.

“Shit,” Grant breathes.

There’s a tug at his waist and then Coulson’s using his binoculars to take a closer look. “Is that-?” he asks.

“Daniels,” Fitz says. Coulson turns sharply, almost eagerly. But Fitz shakes his head. “It killed him. It wears its victims bodies. ‘S what it wants with Ward.” He smiles tightly at Grant. “That’s why Malick sent him here.”

“You just make friends all over, don’t you?” Coulson says dryly. As it’s obviously rhetorical, Grant doesn’t bother to answer. He watches Hive instead.

He’s easy to pick out in his tattered clothes. And the limp is real enough, though it doesn’t seem to slow him down much.

One of the men stops and the rest follow suit. Grant hugs the ground, grateful this planet doesn’t have any direct sunlight to reflect off the binoculars. Maybe they haven’t been seen.

And for once today it looks like luck is with him. None of the figures turn in their direction. After a few minutes, Hive lifts an arm, gesturing to the man who stopped first. Whatever he’s indicating, it gets lost in a wave of sand, what looks to be a dust storm localized entirely to the space between Hive and the grunt. The others fall back. Fearful shouts echo off the rocks.

“What did-?” Fitz asks.

Coulson doesn’t answer. The storm ends. Hive lowers his hand. The grunt is gone, but there is a dark shadow on the rocks that wasn’t there before, too small to be a whole body. Hive doesn’t acknowledge the other grunts. He just picks up where he left off, following the trail that’ll lead him to Grant.

He doesn’t limp anymore.

“Let’s go,” Coulson says. He’s on his feet, pulling Grant so that he has to struggle to get his feet under him.

“What happened?” Fitz asks. He’s practically running to keep up.

“He killed him.”

“Yeah, I guessed that, but-”

“He left the bones. Nothing else.”

Fitz is quiet for all of five seconds, then he snaps back to his senses and hurries to catch up again, cursing inventively all the way. “Simmons,” he says when he reaches them, “she said-”

“I know.”

Coulson keeps pushing Grant forward but he’s not the only one struggling. They may be going downhill but the grade is too sharp for even Coulson and Fitz to make it down without huffing and puffing. His leg gives out entirely twice on the way; he’d be flat on his back waiting for Hive to hollow him out if it weren’t for Coulson constantly at his back. He waits until they reach something approaching level ground to ask, “Is anyone gonna tell me what Simmons said?”

Apparently the answer to his question is _no_ because no one bothers to fill him in before or after they’ve caught their breath. That’s okay, he’s not really sure he _wants_ to know more about the alien looking to possess him.

“Fitz?” Coulson asks. “Which way?”

Fitz pokes at his tablet for a few seconds, lifting it to the sky like he’s trying to align it with a satellite or something. “I can’t- It lost its position when I slipped back there. I need a better view of the sky.” But there are light clouds overhead and Fitz is leaning against that rock like he might never stand again.

Coulson takes the tablet from his hand. “You two take a minute. I’ll be right back.”

“Sir-”

“Just point it at the stars, right?” Coulson asks. He’s already heading out across the open sand.

After a brief hesitation, Fitz nods.

The silence—or as close to it as they can get when they’re both breathing heavy and the wind’s whistling by—is choking. Grant does his best nonchalant act, taking his time to lift his wounded leg onto a rock and examine it while pretending he wears handcuffs all the time, no big deal. But eventually it gets to even him and he’s gotta say something.

“I guess you’re pretty relieved.”

Fitz has been blatantly ignoring him to focus on Coulson’s tablet dance, but his head whips around at the simple statement. “Because we get to drag you home instead of leaving you for It? You think I’d be happy about that?”

Grant lets himself smile. “Because you don’t have to drag Daniels home. He and Simmons were a thing, right? You were playing the white knight, bringing him back for her?” It’s kinda pathetic, honestly.

Fitz doesn’t answer. He doesn’t need to, it’s written all over his face that Grant’s right.

Coulson’s voice echoes off the rocks. Whatever he says, it’s lost in the wind, but when Grant looks his way, he can guess what he meant: the portal’s opened up less than twenty feet behind him.

“We made it,” Fitz says. He’s so happy he doesn’t even complain when Grant grabs onto him.

He uses Fitz’s shoulder as a crutch to lever himself up. Fluid rushes into his aching leg. He feels lightheaded for seconds too long to count.

Fitz’s voice cuts through the haze. “Wait- what’s he doing?”

Coulson’s coming towards them, his gun out. Grant’s blood—what’s left of it not in his leg—goes ice cold. Coulson came across the universe to kill him, kept him alive as a human shield, of course he’s not gonna want him to come back to Earth.

He ducks beneath the sound of gunfire, instinctively taking Fitz with him. It’s only when he sees a ricochet off the wrong side of a rock that he realizes it’s coming from _behind_ them.

Hive and the grunts. Grant barely sees them before another sandstorm erupts from Hive’s arms. Up close like this, with Hive a good hundred feet above him like some god descending, it just might freeze him in place—but Fitz moves and by necessity Grant goes with him.

“Come on!” Coulson yells. He’s not aiming his pistol at anything anymore. He’s more focused on the portal. How long will it stay open, Grant wonders. A minute? Two? Malick’s waited centuries for this, surely he can wait a few extra minutes.

But Grant’s never depended on luck before, it’s too uncertain. He focuses on his anger—at Malick, at Hive, at Coulson—and uses it to push the pain down. He can do this. Just another few yards, another few steps and he’ll be home and he can put a bullet in Malick’s smiling face.

“Hurry! You can do it!” Coulson yells like he can hear Grant’s thoughts. He turns away, eyeing the portal. Grant wonders what he sees. Is there some sign it’s disappearing?

Suddenly the arm beneath Grant’s cuffed hands twists. He’s on his bad leg, no time to compensate. He turns as best he can, already injured muscles pulling past their limits, his hip hits the ground and then the rest of him.

“You tortured Jemma.” Fitz is standing over him, looking angrier than he ever has, angrier than he did that day he stole Grant’s air away. “You deserve whatever he does to you.” He moves away, out of Grant’s line of sight. Grant could turn to watch him, but he can’t help the morbid desire to look back.

The grunts are gone, nothing but charred remains left in the sand. Hive’s coming. Through his tattered pant leg, Grant can see his injured leg is whole again. He’s not even running. Knowing the distance between him and Grant and the distance between Grant and the portal … he really doesn’t have to.

Grant’s training and every cell in his body tell him to get up, to fight, to _crawl_ if he has to. He’s a goddamn specialist, best since the Black Widow herself, is he really just gonna lie here and wait for death to take him?

But what’s the point? He’s lame and hobbled on top of that and all his weapons are gone. There’s no help coming, no one on this entire planet—or, honestly, the one on the other side of that portal—who would help him. And he certainly can’t fight Hive off on his own, not when he ate his men alive like that. For the first time since he walked through the doors into juvie all those years ago, he has literally no hope, no chance of getting out of this. And what are the odds John’s gonna rise from the dead just to show up and save him a second time?

A shadow falls over Grant. Coulson, his face set in grim lines. He must really want that revenge. Grant wonders if he should make his last words a snide remark about how good Price must’ve been in the sack. Before he can decide, he feels Coulson’s hands on his chest. Metal clatters. That cybernetic hand is eerily tight around his.

“Come on.” Coulson pulls him up, steadies him so he doesn’t go right back down. “There’s still time.”

Grant shakes his head. Hive’s too close now. Unless Coulson plans on carrying Grant through that portal, there’s no way they’ll reach it before Hive reaches them, even at his tortoise pace.

“You can make it.” Coulson’s real hand tightens on his shoulder. Something about the gesture is enough to get Grant’s focus off of the approaching threat and onto him. He smiles. It wrinkles the skin around his eyes, but doesn’t brighten them. “There’ll be trouble on the other side. I’m counting on you to protect Fitz and get Simmons to safety.”

...What?

Grant looks down, only realizes Coulson undid one of the cuffs when he sees the gun he’s pressed into his hand.

“I always knew you could be better. And this is the last second chance I’m ever gonna give you, so if you were ever gonna prove me right, this’d be the time.”

In the distance, Fitz is yelling a warning. Hive’s only a few steps away now, looming behind Coulson like some nightmare monster. But Coulson’s still smiling, the same way he used to do on the Bus, but maybe a little sadder.

“Do your best,” he says. He looks past him just once. To Fitz. To the portal. He gives Grant a little shove, not enough to overbalance him, just enough to get him moving. “You can do this.” Then his smile’s falling away as he turns. His fake hand slams into Hive’s jaw.

That’s the last thing Grant sees before he’s off, doing his best impression of a run. Every step he expects to be his last. Hive will have pulled himself together and taken care of Coulson the same way he did those grunts and then he’ll come for Grant. But every step is followed by another until he’s grabbing Fitz, forcing him back despite his protests that they have to wait, Coulson needs them. Luckily he’s so emotional he doesn’t consider that all he has to do to get the upper-hand is deliver one swift kick to Grant’s injured leg.

Grant doesn’t let himself look back. He does what he’s always done best: he follows orders.

Protect Fitz.

Get them both through the portal.

Turns out the rest—keeping Fitz and Simmons safe from Hydra—isn’t really necessary. Once he can see past the stars the rough landing puts in his eyes, it becomes clear that SHIELD’s taken the mock base Malick set up outside the castle. Not much left for Grant to do here except have his gun—Coulson’s gun, he thinks when that Mackenzie guy rips it from his hands—taken for the second time today and the loose cuff closed around his wrist more tightly than before.

There are arguments. Everyone wants to know where Coulson is. Everyone wants to know why Grant’s alive. But the castle is about to be blown up so those questions can wait until they’ve reached safety.

Grant lets himself be dragged onto a containment pod. He doesn’t watch the castle disappear through the window or pay attention to the glares aimed his way. His focus is on the makeshift bandage wrapped around his leg and his shoulder where Coulson’s touch still lingers.

It was because he thought Hydra was still running things on the other side. He knew Grant was Fitz’s best chance of survival. And Coulson’s been a spy for more than half his life, of course he’d go down manipulating someone one last time.

But somehow that doesn’t quite track. Grant’s injured. And Coulson knew the entire mission had been a double-cross from the start and Malick never expected or wanted Grant back. He’d have been better off going himself, using his status to protect Fitz and Simmons or even attempting a surprise attack—that arm of his isn’t nothing.

Wasn’t.

Darkness swallows Grant up. Maybe it’s just the lights going out briefly when they dock with a plane or maybe it’s him closing his eyes but for a few seconds it feels like he’ll never see again.

Coulson’s arm _wasn’t_ nothing. Past tense because there is no way he survived that fight. He’s dead.

It’s not as satisfying as Grant thought it’d be. In fact, if he had to, he might compare what he’s feeling now to that jagged emptiness he felt for the first few weeks he spent as a prisoner after CyberTek went down.

But just like then, he’s too much of a fighter to let the emptiness take him. He feels eyes on him and he’s gotta open his to mark the threat. Everyone else is gone—he should probably worry that he was out of it long enough to miss that—so it’s just him, all alone in here, and it takes him another second to realize someone’s watching through one of the windows.

It’s Simmons, looking as bad as when he left her and then some. His stomach clenches in anger. He ordered Giyera not to touch her again while he was gone. But then he realizes it’s not physical pain he’s seeing on her face, it’s heartbreak. Daniels. She was hoping he’d come back and now all she gets is Grant. That’s gotta be one hell of a disappointment.

She moves off and without her to focus on, he starts to hear the argument outside. They’re fighting over him. He wonders why they don’t just kill him and be done with it, it’s what they all want anyway.

He looks down at his leg and the blood-soaked bandage. For a second he’s back there. Sand whipping past. Death at his back. Coulson’s voice clear over the wind. _I always knew you could be better._

Did he really mean that or was it just one last play from a lifelong spy? And if he did mean it, was it really true or just one of those bullshit things people say when they’re facing death?

Grant wants it to be true.

It’s a surprise, but he’s used to rolling with the punches. He accepts it as fact and moves on to the consequential following thought.

The fighting is dying down. SHIELD’s won this round—though not without suffering a pretty hefty loss along the way—and they’re willing to put off dealing with him just because looking at him would only make a bad day worse.

That’s good, Grant thinks while he gingerly lays down on the cot. That gives him more time. More of a chance. His _last_ chance.

He’ll do what he can with it. To be better, like Coulson said.

 _You can do this_.

The words follow him into sleep. He answers them with his last conscious thought before the day catches up with him: he will.

 


End file.
